AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTFinal Words
When AMD launched the Radeon HD 7970 last month there was a great deal of speculation that the Radeon HD 7950 would be their direct GeForce GTX 580 competitor, and indeed this has proven to be the case. While the 7970 sails past the GTX 580—and AMD has priced it based on that—the 7950 and the GTX 580 are trading blows on a game-by-game basis, similar to what we saw last year in comparing the GTX 500 series and the Radeon HD 6900 series. But when the 7950 wins it wins big, while the same cannot be said of the GTX 580; the only real weakness for the 7950 right now is Battlefield 3, and while that’s an important game it’s but one of several.
Ultimately it’s not a fair fight, not that AMD ever intended it to be one. Outside of a few corner cases the 7950 renders the GTX 580 irrelevant, and while it’s not quite as immense as what the 5850 did to the GTX 285 2 years ago the outcome is much the same. With the 7950 AMD can deliver performance similar to if not better than the GTX 580 while consuming significantly less power and enjoying all the temperature & noise benefits that provides, making it a very attractive card.
On that note the cooling situation makes the launch of the 7950 one of the more unusual high-end product launches in recent history. With high-end cards typically sticking to reference designs for the first phase of their lives the 7950 lineup is going to be much more varied than normal, not only in gaming performance due to factory overclocks but in cooling performance too. While we can speak in absolutes about the gaming performance of the 7950 there is no common thread on cooling performance—it needs to be evaluated on a per-product basis, so it will be important to do your research.
Meanwhile the $450 price tag is unfortunately not very aggressive on AMD’s part, but with their lead in rolling out their new lineup this is to be expected. Given its performance the 7950 only needs to be as cheap as the cheapest GTX 580 and that’s exactly what AMD has done. There will ultimately be a massive price shakeup at the high-end due to 28nm, but this looks like it won’t happen until AMD has some competition at 28nm or 7900 sales slow down significantly.
Finally, what about our retail sample cards, the XFX R7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation and the Sapphire HD 7950 Overclock Edition? These two cards clearly embody the type of variety we’re going to see from AMD’s partners; they have fairly large factory overclocks and large open air coolers, and with these customizations AMD’s partners are hoping to set themselves apart from each other while justifying a higher MSRP in the process.
Overall the Sapphire HD 7950 Overclock Edition is the clear winner among the two cards. While I believe our specific sample is well above the average card due to its extremely low VID, in terms of design Sapphire has clearly done their homework and it shows with an excellent cooler that is ridiculously quiet and equally as cool. The factory overclock isn’t anything that shouldn’t be achievable on your own, but if you’re serious about overclocking the cooler alone would be enough to justify the extra $30.
On the other hand the XFX R7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation ends up being a bummer, particularly compared to its 7970 based sibling. For what an open air cooler can do it’s simply too hot and too loud; the numbers we’re seeing would be acceptable for a blower, but not for an open air cooler. The gaming performance is great thanks to its best in class factory overclock, but this isn’t enough to overlook the obvious cooling troubles.
Wrapping things up, so far we’ve looked at single card performance, but what about CrossFire? Later this week we’ll be looking at 7970 and 7950 CrossFire performance, and what the plethora of open air coolers means for 7950 users. So stay tuned.
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Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Well some of us do care about noise and power consumption. That sapphire card runs very cool and quiet, nearly silent in fact. It uses 30 less watts at typical idle and nearly 100 watts less than a 580 while gaming. That's about a penny per hour of gaming. Power savings could easily reach $40 over two years of gaming, plus another $30 if you leave your pc on 24/7, for a total of $70 saved over two years.Thats is about what one year of technological advancement is worth.
SlyNine - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Because in part the 480/580 are dogs in regards to power consumption. My 5870 idles at nearly the same and only uses a bit more under load. It is also 2 1/2 years older.AssBall - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
You do realize that the parts you have "execs jumping out of windows" about account for maybe 1/200th of the companies income? Guess not.chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Actually I think these parts will make up an overwhelming % of the company's income given their graphics division is one of the few within AMD that consistently turns a profit. But I guess I actually know what "income" is and how its calculated. Given these parts sell for 50% higher price than any single-ASIC SKU (CPU or GPU) in the last 5 years, I think there's a good chance these parts will make up the bulk of their profit for the quarter.You really think AMD is turning some amazing profit on their free AR Bulldozer promos or happy meal priced APUs when they struggle to make a profit on a quarterly basis? There's break-even (90-95% of their revenue) and then there's parts like this that actually sell for a profit. They don't need to sell high volume on these parts when the ASP and margins are so healthy.
repoman27 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Actually, you should try reading AMD's Q4 earnings report which was just posted here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5465/amd-q411-fy-201...The graphics division only accounted for 8.4% of AMD's operating income for fiscal 2011, if you ignore the accounting monkey business regarding GloFo.
Of that 8.4%, about half is likely attributable to FirePro because the gross margins for professional and compute solutions are easily double that of consumer GPUs.
While the ASP's and gross margins on enthusiast cards are great compared to the high volume consumer stuff, they still represent a niche market, and realistically less than 3% of AMD's 2011 operating income.
chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
I have read it and it obviously doesn't include any significant Tahiti or 28nm parts, since they only started to ship the first few units for revenue for that Jan 7th 7970 launch.As stated in the article:
"while the first true 7000 series part (Tahiti) did not launch until 2012 and only started shipping for revenue very late into 2011. Still, it was enough to have a significant impact on AMD’s GPU ASP, increasing it over 2010’s ASP even with the limited number of new products."
Obviously projected revenue will be much higher with a full quarter at these prices.
But yes the rest of your post confirms my point, if you want to point to FirePro I can already guarantee you they will sell more 7970 consumer desktop parts than any FirePro parts using the same ASIC, we're not talking about Quadro here lol.
At $450-600, that's already a HUGE markup and increase in their gross margins compared to any previous single-ASIC desktop SKU, so its obviously going to result in a huge increase in profits.
And no you can't just discount that "GloFo" business, if the rest of the company loses money because of poor supplier/pricing decisions and selling prices and the other consistently makes money and represents the bulk of the company's income.
repoman27 - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Seriously, put down the crack pipe.Have you ever looked at the relative prices of consumer desktop parts vs. FirePro parts based on the same chip? Yes, they will sell a lot more of the consumer parts, and yet they will still make more profit on the fewer FirePro parts sold. So when AMD wholesales chips to partners so the partners can produce cards that end up retailing for $450-600, you believe their gross margins are higher than when they sell a FirePro V9800 directly to a retailer who turns around and sells it for $2800?
Why are you so convinced that the difference in retail release prices for the 7 series and 6 series is solely attributable to AMD expanding their gross margin? The 7 series is being offered for 50% more than the 6 series was, and yet the transistor count increased by over 62%. Not to mention that these are the first parts produced on the new 28nm node, so yields are probably less than stellar at this point, despite what TSMC might have us believe.
Furthermore, the GloFo business is germane to both the CPU and GPU divisions. Graphics accounted for less than a quarter of AMD's overall revenue for 2011 and only 8.4% of their income, no matter how you want to look at it. All I omitted was the one time charges that AMD took for the decrease in value of their stake in GloFo and the costs associated with their corporate restructuring.
No matter what you believe, 8.4 is a larger number than 91.6. Hang it up, you're flat out wrong.
chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
No, you need to put down the "crack pipe."You're using past performance to define FUTURE revenue forecasts, which is what my statement was about. That's the whole point, the GPU division WAS disappointing in 2011, but ASP and profit increased year over year in Q4 based on the high ASP of the few Tahiti parts that shipped in December.
Obviously Tahiti parts will have a bigger impact on both numbers in Q1 '12 with a full 3 quarters and volume shipment at these high ASPs which is exactly what I stated.
As for why I think the difference in 7 and 6 series pricing was the difference in segment margins? Because I know how to read financial statements and MD&A. 11/12 months with DECLINING revenue and margins selling only 6 series and specifically cited by AMD caused by declining sales and ASP on their desktop and shortages of their Llano mobile parts. Then in Q4, despite declining revenue sequentially and y2y, their ASP, margins and profit increases. Do you think this is a result of their 6 series which spent the whole year declining in sales and margin, or the 7 series that sell for 50-100% more than their previous products? Hmmm.....
Now what do you think is going to happen with a full 3 quarters at the same prices for the graphics division? What do you think is going to happen to the company's financials given they are predicting a gloomy outlook with predicted 8% decrease in revenue sequentially? I can already guarantee you the graphics division will be profitable, maybe ~$100M, but the CPU division will at best break even if they don't post a loss. Which brings us full circle to the comment you and others apparently had issue with:
Actually I think these parts will make up an overwhelming % of the company's income given their graphics division is one of the few within AMD that consistently turns a profit.
repoman27 - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
And clearly I meant to say that 8.4 is NOT a larger number than 91.6.Sunburn74 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I think the power.consumption reductions are quite significant and eventually may be passed onto the mobile space.